But after the massacre of St. Bartholomew's Day the hopes of the Huguenots were blighted. If the king is not referred to by name, his mother figures as the guilty cause of all the misfortune of France. She is a second Helen born for the ruin of her adopted country, according to Etienne de Maisonfleur. Helene femme estrangere Fut la seule mesnagere Qui ruina Ilion, Et la reine Catherine Est de France la ruine Par l'Oracle de Leon. "Leon" is Catharine's uncle, Pope Leo the Tenth, who was said to have predicted the total destruction of whatever house she should be married into. See also the famous libel "Discours merveilleux de la vie de Catherine de Medicis" (Ed. of Cologne, Pierre du Marteau, 1693), p. 609. The massacre of St. Bartholomew's Day naturally contributes a considerable fund of laments, etc., to the Huguenot popular poetry of the century. A poem apparently belonging to a more remote date, discovered by Dr. Roullin, and perhaps the only Breton song of the kind that has come down to us, is as simple and unaffected a narrative as any of the modern Greek _moerologia_ (Vaurigaud, Essaie sur l'hist. des eglises ref. de Bretagne, 1870, i. 6). It tells the story of a Huguenot girl betrayed to the executioner by her own mother. In spite of a few dialectic forms, the verses are easily understood. Voulz-vous ouir l'histoire D'une fille d'espit Qui n'a pas voulu croire Chose que l'on lui dit. --Sa mere dit: "Ma fille, A la messe allons donc!" --"Y aller a la messe, Ma mere, ce n'est qu'abus. Apportez-moi mes livres Avec mes beaux saluts. J'aimerais mieux etre brulee Et vantee au grand vent Que d'aller a la messe En faussant mon serment." --Quand sa tres-chere mere Eut entendu c' mot la, Au bourreau de la ville Sa fille elle livra. "Bourreau, voila ma fille! Fais a tes volontes; Bourreau, fais de ma fille Comme d'un meurtrier." Quand elle fut sur l'echelle, Trois rollons ja montee, Elle voit sa mere Qui chaudement pleurait. "Ho! la cruelle mere Qui pleure son enfant Apres l'avoir livree Dans les grands feux ardents. Vous est bien fait, ma mere, De me faire mourir. Je vois Jesus, mon pere, Qui, de son beau royaume, Descend pour me querir. Son royaume sur terre Dans peu de temps viendra, Et cependant mon ame En paradis ira." FOOTNOTES: [1] The nuncio alone seems to have thought that the edict would work so well, that "in six months, or a year at farthest, there would not be a single Huguenot in France!" His ground of confidence was that many, if not most of the reformed, were influenced, not by zeal for religion, but by cupidity. Santa Croce to Card. Borromeo, Jan. 17, 1562, Aymon, i. 44; Cimber et Danjou, vi. 30.